Background

BRIDGES is a five-year programme (2019-2024) that aims to create employment opportunities for young women and men by unlocking the job creation potential of industrial parks (IPs), other anchor enterprises (AEs), and their surrounding ecosystem including micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs). BRIDGES works to capitalize on, and scale-up its previous experiences and key learnings within the industrial sector toward creating direct employment linkages, as well as establishing sustainable market linkages between AEs and MSMEs.

With Ethiopia's labour force expanding by two million each year, BRIDGES seeks to contribute toward the country's efforts of creating highly productive and decent jobs for its young population by direct job creation within factories, as well as creating employment opportunities in micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). The result of these efforts will be the creation of jobs for more than 600,000 young people.

BRIDGES is funded by the Mastercard Foundation and is implemented by First Consult in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation’s Young Africa Works initiative. First Consult is one of the prominent development consulting firms in Ethiopia, with more than 15 years of experience in designing and implementing several private sector development and access to finance projects.

The BRIDGES programme aims to contribute towards Ethiopia’s efforts of creating highly competent, skillful, and productive youth, ultimately supporting the creation of dignified and fulfilling jobs. The programme was able to reach only tens of thousands of people through conducting face-to-face trainings over the past two years. During the process, it was ascertained that most young people require motivation, a positive mindset, entrepreneurial, employability and soft skills to develop themselves and become major contributors to the economic development of the country. However, continuing in the face-to-face capacity building modality was not practical from financial and logistics perspective. Furthermore, targeting unemployed youth only through the government owned unemployed database was only fulfilling small portion of the supply side.

Under the Enterprise Development Bridge, BRIDGES has launched ‘‘Awaqi’ youth digital platform’, an efficient way of delivery method, targeting young people throughout Ethiopia, using five social media outlets to redirect and refocus the mindset of at least one million youth to an entrepreneurial mindset, and support the creation of dignified and fulfilling jobs for 300,000 unemployed young women and men through wage and self-employment.

Awaqi is a youth-centered online mindset, soft skills, entrepreneurship and employability skills training and information sharing platform gearing towards enterprise development and employment creation. It includes evidence-based short inspirational and motivational videos, training materials, internship, training and job opportunities for young people. It also serves as an online guidance and coaching hub for young entrepreneurs to enable them create micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and diversify windows of opportunity.

 Objectives and scope of assignment

The main objective of the assignment is to conduct an in-depth assessment of the behavior, interest and needs of young people aged between 15-29, identify critical training topics to positively impact their mindset and develop easy-to-use self-assessment tools and practical training modules. The assessment should also come up with clear action points, content framework development, recommendations based on the findings as well as propose integration/ collaboration models.

Scope of work

• Conduct an in-depth assessment on the interests and behaviors of young people and needs related to skill and online career guidance resources that could enhance wage and self-employment
• Assess the prevailing mindset, capacity and usage of existing digital career guidance resources among the target group;
• Identify and classify the dominant social media channels preferred by the specified target group (classified by gender, topography, people with disability and others) and explore frequent types of contents and pages followed used on various social media platforms. Develop communication strategy to deliver or guide the content framework development and consequently, come up with a recommendation to the ‘Awaqi’ youth digital platform context;
• Review other similar digital projects in Ethiopia as well as compile best practices with regards to creating positive behavioral impact and jobs in other developing countries;
• Conduct in-depth research on the behaviors, interests and needs of young people aged between 15-29, with a special emphasis to those using social media;
• Propose effective ways of addressing the target group and various tools that can positively impact young people’s social and emotional learning, and career prospect;
• Identify specific areas of interest in terms of skill needs, content, delivery method and come up with concrete ideas on ways of learning digitally by conducting focus group discussions with the target group in Addis Ababa and five major urban centers and cities;
• Identify how to effectively present the topics and learning objectives digitally, using social media and video sharing platforms;
• Identify key training topics and other intervention areas that are considered effective in psychological research and develop customized assessment tools and training modules for digital usage;
• Propose ideal integration and collaboration model of various initiatives/career centers in Ethiopia working on economic empowerment/ youth employment.

Approach and Methodology

The consultant should devise an approach and detailed methodology that is participatory, inclusive and evidence-based and includes interviews and focus groups discussions with a special focus on young people using the internet and social media, desk research and field visit in Addis Ababa and 5 major urban towns.

A clear approach and methodology for content framework development and development of training materials should also be proposed.

 Deliverables

• Inception report that includes approach and methodology and agreed upon by the BRIDGES team
• Draft and final report on the in-depth assessment
• Communication strategy for the contents/materials development
• Clear outline of training topics, self-assessment tools and practical training modules for digital usage

Job Requirements

Required Expertise

The consultant should have:

• Extensive experience working on psychological and social behaviors of young people related to employability
• Proven knowledge and experience on conducting youth behavioral insight assessment
• Excellent analytical skills and technical and conceptual knowledge on young people’s psychology specific to mindset, social and emotional learning
• Experience in providing coaching services for young people
• Profound practice in soft skills training and personal development
• Proficiency in developing psychological assessment tools and training modules
• Experience on career guidance, counseling and development specifically for unemployed youth

Ability to provide the required services will be assessed through submission of:-

• Separate Technical and Financial proposals
• Company profile, if applicable, with relevance to related work
• Detailed CVs of consultants
• References on previous similar assignments
• Sample outputs and materials

How to Apply

Timeline

The assignment is expected to take 2 months starting from December 1, 2021. The consultant should provide a detailed breakdown for the timeline.

 Technical and financial proposal should be sent by email to bids3@firstconsultet.com by November 15, 2021.